


Dust | We too can Settle

by chaWOOPa



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Multi, Pen Pals, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, but the angst train just does not stop, pain pals, there is gonna be happy times in this i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-01-17 21:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12374832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaWOOPa/pseuds/chaWOOPa
Summary: The only constant in Taako's long life (there is static were his age should be in his head and that makes sense because it has been too many years since he has celebrated his birthday) is the rainbow of colors on his skin that means someone out there loves him.  The fact that he shares pain with six other people barely phases him at this point when something happens to one of them. Mostly they just fade in and out existence like bruises and cuts as he lives his life knowing that somewhere the owners of these colors are waiting to welcome him home.The thought jars Taako every time he has it. Taako has never had home and doubts he could ever find one.





	1. Chapter One

When Taako met Magnus and Merle he wasn’t sure how exactly they fit into the web of color on his skin, but he knew they did. They all three bore matching red starbursts next to their left eyes and a deep purple line slicing through the skin between thumb and pointer that Taako knew to be the first time he used a knife. There was matching light blue spattered across their right cheekbones in a pattern resembling freckles. Magnus had the real scars to match the bright yellow on Merle and Taako (one of which crossed over the pattern of blue in a way that reminded Taako of the laughter and happiness that came with home, though he couldn’t remember why). Merle only had one visible scar at the moment, a line that started right behind ear and ran all the way to the top of his shoulder blade. A line that matched the sunset orange lines on both Taako and Magnus, and while he was missing the final ingredient to the color soup that made up ‘Taako’ (a soft red that was sometimes mistaken for part of a flush and was only visible in a few lines across the backs of Taako’s hands), the way he spoke made Taako think of a family he had never really had and he found himself drifting towards the two of them long before he had planned to.

 

When he finally sat down at their table, startling the two of them out of their conversation they had been having, part of him had already decided to trust them.

 

Nothing changed about that trust when he showed them the colors he kept concealed from the rest of the world. Nothing changed when they got the job from Gundren. Nothing changed when they found the dead horses or Barry Bluejeans (there was smeared makeup where he had been beaten and the boys recognized some new lime green marks on their faces that matched exactly with Barry’s new bruises and cuts, but if anyone but Taako made the connection they weren’t saying it, so neither was he). Nothing changed when they found Wave Echo Cave or the orc woman who tried to kill them. Nothing changed when they took out Magic Brian and found the Umbrastaff. Nothing changed when they found the gauntlet and Gundren took it for his own. Nothing changed that a small part of Taako trusted these two strangers with his life, and that simple fact was terrifying.

 

Last time he had trusted someone with more than just his attention they had turned tail and run as soon as he had shown genuine emotion.

 

Not that running was really an option at this point, the three of them were fully in it now. Every blow to Magnus was a blow to Taako and Merle, every blow to Taako was a blow to Magnus and Merle, every blow to Merle was a blow to Magnus and Taako. They were family (Taako couldn’t figure out why Magnus insisted on the use of that word let alone why it felt so _right_ ) no matter what and these two boys who were climbing into the glossy silver cannonball were in it with him now. No going back.

 

Taako took one last look at the perfect circle of black glass and then beyond to the half-ruined buildings and the still burning ruins at the very edge, to the woods just behind them. If he ran fast he could make it before anyone would be able to stop him, they were too preoccupied with the ball. He could drop the glove, let the orc woman take care of it like she clearly so desperately wanted, and run. No families, no trust, no way he could get hurt.

 

Magnus put a gentle hand on his shoulder, said his name and Taako looked down to see the deep purple of a knife wound that had been healed by the loving hand of- he guessed it was his aunt. He couldn’t seem to remember what she looked like, but that wasn’t a big deal. He could remember _her_. He could remember feeling loved.

 

With one last look towards the forest, ( _safety_ , part of Taako screamed, _cowardice_ , another that sounded too much like Magnus for comfort corrected) Taako climbed into the ball after Magnus, Merle, and Killian.

 

“Just for the record,” Taako said quickly before the ball could lift off, “I think you two are idiots and I don’t know why I am going along with this.”

 

“You got a better plan to… to destroy that there magic-y glove-y do-dad that just glassed over a whole town?” Merle laughed.

 

“You think- I – I mean, I don’t have a better plan, no, but if you think I really care about a town of nobodies- whooo boi! I got some news for you!” Taako forced a laugh as he looked out the window of the now rising ball at the ever shrinking glass circle. Very quickly he pulled his head back and crossed his arms over his stomach. _Those people,_ the thought drifted unbidden into his head and Taako latched onto it like a lifeline as they ascended towards the second moon and part of him realized that his body count now included two towns, _All of them were just Dust._

 

 _“Dust can settle, Taako, and so eventually can you.”_ a memory whispered in his head with golden lettering on tan skin that looked too much like his own to make any sense at all because Taako, well, Taako didn’t have a Pen pal. Taako had _never_ had a pen pal.


	2. Chapter 2

Lucretia had lost track of her boys almost simultaneously about five years into their decade without memory. She had gone to visit Merle’s beach community only to leave promptly when a now fatherless Mavis and Mookie informed her that they hadn’t seen him in several weeks. She had visited Raven’s Roost only to find the craftsman’s district a smoldering ruin and the only thing keeping the bile in her throat from rising out of her mouth was the knowledge that no new yellow marks had made an appearance on her skin.

 

Lucretia was at the last showing of Sizzle-it-Up. She was there when Taako passed out the poisoned samples, helped give out a few of them herself. She gave hers up to a child who had been just a little too late to get their own sample, even. At the first sign of sickness she wondered, and realized just a little too late what was happening. She tried to find Taako in the aftermath, but he was gone by the time she reached the stagecoach.

 

When they next made an appearance in her life, it was through Killian telling her that three idiots were in the same cave mixed up in the same things as Gundren and some part of her hoped that Killian was wrong while the other desperately cried out that her family was coming home.

 

It was hard not to rejoice when Killian said she was bringing the three up as new recruits even as she was supposed to be mourning the loss of another town to a power she had been complicit in making.

 

It was harder still to ignore the urge to hug her family (because that is what they were, with their patchwork of colors and scars that she had so desperately missed, they were her brother and her father and her sibling, they were her Magnus and Merle and Taako, they were _hers_ ) once they were in the room with her, asking question after inane question about her supposed life’s work. She fought back tears as they belittled themselves and each other; as they talked like strangers; as their words warped in her perception of who they were and she came to realize just how much she had hurt them.

 

Magnus used to have so much love in his heart that he wore on his sleeve but now it was guarded. Something had broken in him, had died with Raven’s roost and his goofing was shaper, meant to cover something he didn’t want people to see but Lucretia had known this man since he was 20. He and she had been children when they left their home for something far greater than either could have ever imagined and he had never lost the innocence that pushed him to love others, not in a hundred years. Not until now.

 

Merle, sweet Merle, loving Merle who had founded a church and then went down with it instead of leaving them; brave Merle who would rather face down their greatest enemy fifty times than let even the hope of losing to him seep into his heart; faithful Merle who would have never given up his family or his god for anything, not even the yearly apocalypse had a light of unease in his eyes that she had only ever seen in those who didn’t know who they were anymore. He had run from his greatest desire, from his ideal life for after everything, and now he was standing in front of her with half the commitment of a man less than the Merle Highchurch she knew and loved. She decided right then and there she would love this one too.

 

Taako was the worst of them all. He looked like he had one foot out the door at all times, ready to bolt as soon as things got bad or people got attached. He clung to his things like lifelines and the eye that he and Lup had always claimed belonged to her never seemed to be focused on this moment. He held himself like half of him was missing and when he spoke it was all weaponized truth with none of the kindness Lup had brought out of him. He was all sharp edges and blurry lines, one part of a two piece jigsaw set that was missing the information to connect it to the other. When he called himself an idiot and believed it Lucretia realized just how much she had taken from him. Lup had been the ground beneath his feet, she had been his heart and his conscience and now he was adrift alone without any idea why and it was Lucretia’s fault.

 

Lucretia dreamed of broken puzzle pieces and missing family members that night when she went to bed.

 

* * *

 

There was something in the Director’s face when Taako met her that was both familiar and alien at the same time and he couldn’t place it no matter how hard he tried. There was something gently nudging the back of his mind as he stood in the back of their group of three, and he tried solidly to ignore the image of golden writing on his arm. “ _You aren’t alone, you know_ ” was planted firmly in his head and he could hear the same tone of… something in her voice when she told them they didn’t have to be so hard on themselves. Was it affection? Was it amusement? Was it sadness? Taako could pinpoint it almost as well as he could pinpoint the reason he had seen her face and felt like something was missing there. He had the distinct feeling that if he tried to name it he would speak static. His eyes had drifted immediately to the spot by her left eye where he would have found a red starburst on the two men standing next to him and something in him had mourned at the lack of color there.

 

There was lingering void static in his head when he tried to think about certain things; the possibility of a pen pal, where he recognized the Director from, why there would be more void static. Once the trial of initiation was over and they were allowed to go to their quarters, he found his mind wandering dangerously close to static again. It didn’t help a whole lot, wondering things your brain couldn’t think, but that had never stopped Taako before.

 

It was during his post-everything pre-sleep beauty routine that the idea to just try to write too (whoever might possibly be but probably wasn’t) his penpal occurred to him. “Why am I even trying this?” he asked himself quietly as he pulled some fantasy eyeliner out of a makeup bag he had pillaged from the Fantasy Costco earlier that day. “No one will answer,” he chided himself as he set the black brush to the skin on his inner forearm. He hesitated just a second before carefully writing _I don’t have a soulmate_ in a loose, looping script on his arm.

 

He waited for it to dry before carefully braiding his hair, trying not to let his eyes wander to his arm where he knew a response would never form. It didn’t take long for him to wash it off, though he wasn’t sure if it was the inherent _wrongness_ of having those words against his skin or the aching in his chest that thinking about pen pals set off. Instead he replaced it with _I don’t know why I bothered writing to you_ quickly scrubbing it off and replacing it with _There is no you to write to, why am I wasting my time and precious eyeliner on this fucking fantasy of mine?_

 

Taako wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but once they started flowing they didn’t stop, he scrubbed his arm each time it became too full of his own thoughts for him to write anymore down until finally, finally he felt calm again. There was something about sharing his thoughts (there was part of him that was buried in static that knew that _someone_ was listening even though the rest of him didn’t) that made him feel better about the situation even though he would need to pick up more fantasy eyeliner the next day.

 

The boys would tease him all they wanted for all he cared when he sat with a pen and washcloth the next night, and the one after that, and almost every night since, because having things out of his head was so much better than keeping them in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to update! I am but a poor college student trying my best make a way in the world. 
> 
> I will try to be more consistent from now on. <3


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